Big Gabi talks contract, trophies, Gyokeres

Morning all, it’s gonna be a quick, early Monday blog for you, as I’ve gotta head to the airport to catch a flight (or two flights to be exact) to Singapore.

At the time of writing, there’s been nothing stirring in the world of Viktor Gyokeres. I don’t know if his dad is still sad and weeping, although in an interview in The Athletic (£), Gabriel was asked about the Swedish striker, and reflected on the game we played against Sporting last season, saying:

When we played against him, it was a big challenge for us. What we know now is that he’s a great player, who definitely had a great season last year.

The reporting suggests that Arsenal are ‘relaxed’ about the situation, but how things feel internally versus how fans feel externally are often very different. There was, inevitably, some chatter yesterday about Man Utd being interested. The Ruben Amorim connection is obvious, but that was downplayed almost straight away. This week has to be decisive though. I don’t know if Andrea Berta has gone on the tour or if he’s stayed behind in London to get this done, but I hope it’s the latter – he has work to do. Whether it happens in time for Big Vik to join up with the tour remains to be seen, but let’s see.

Back to Gabriel, and he also spoke about his decision to put pen to paper on a new contract. He was the first to do so this summer, followed by Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri (although we still await official club confirmation of that). He says:

I’ve already been at the club five years, and I can see the progress that’s happening here. I’m here to win titles, to achieve things, to help make Arsenal even bigger. I truly believe this upcoming season will be a big challenge for us, but I also believe we can win things. We have a great chance of winning a trophy.

In the last few years, we were very close to winning things, and it ended up slipping away. But I have complete confidence in the club and everything they’re doing to help it grow, and I’m certain that this year we’ll be fighting again.

From a club that seemed to have to deal with contract sagas all the time, players running down their deals and leaving for free, or players being paid to just go away, we’ve come quite a distance. Make no mistake, if Gabriel wanted a move, he’d have his pick of clubs all over Europe, but he’s decided to commit to Arsenal and regardless of how frustrated you were about last season or this summer or anything else, that’s still worth taking note of.

We’re keeping our best young talent, we’ve tied down one of our most experienced players, and while there are still a couple of contracts we all want to see sorted out, the fact someone of the stature of Gabriel has decided his prime years will be spent in North London isn’t something to be sniffed at. He also talks in the interview about the recovery from the hamstring surgery, he’s back with the main group now, and hopefully he’ll be ready to go for the start of the new season. The upcoming pre-season games against AC Milan and Newcastle might tell us something too, so let’s see.

Right, I’m gonna leave it there for now, and get moving. I’m looking forward to meeting people at an event in Singapore on Tuesday evening, so please say hi if you’re there, and hopefully we can bump into lots of fans from Singapore and beyond over the course of the week. Andrew Allen will have tomorrow’s blog for you, but I’ll pick up the reins again during the week – the time difference makes it easy to keep the blog going despite the travel.

For now, I’ll leave you with a brand new Arsecast Extra recorded yesterday. Phil Costa is filling in for James. Have a good one folks!